‘BAIT’ CRIMES ARE ON THE RISE
Press keeps swallowing bogus bigotry
In the wake of the arrest of actor Jussie Smollett, who was charged with staging his own racist and homophobic attack, here are other “crimes” that have been given prominent play by the media since the 2016 election — often accompanied by politicians decrying, “This is America today” — and that turned out to be frauds:
Just before the 2016 election, the 111-year-old Hopewell Missionary Baptist Church in Greenville, Miss., was attacked with fire and graffiti that said, “Vote Trump.”
“The political message of the vandalism is obviously an attempt to sway public opinion regarding the upcoming election,” said Rep. Bennie Thompson (DMiss.).
It turned out the alleged arsonist was Andrew McClinton, 48, an African-American member of the church.
“Heil Trump” and “F-g Church” were spray-painted on St. David’s Episcopal Church in Indiana after the election. It was the gay organ player who did it. “Over the course of that week, I was fearful, scared and alone, too, in my fear,” George Nathaniel “Nathan” Stang, 26, explained to the IndyStar. “I guess one of the driving factors behind me committing the act was that I wanted other people to be scared with me.”
Yasmin Seweid, 18, told police that three Donald Trump supporters harassed her and tried to steal her hijab on
a No. 6 train in Manhattan on Dec. 1, 2016. But two weeks later, Seweid (below left) admitted she made the whole thing up because she’d been out late drinking with friends and was afraid her strict Muslim Egyptian father would be angry.
Eastern Michigan University in Ypsilanti was vandalized for months with graffiti that said, “leave n-----s” and “KKK.” A former student, African-American Eddie Curlin, 29, was eventually caught. “It was totally self-serving,” said Robert Heighes, the university’s chief of police. “It was not driven by politics. It was not driven by race.”
More than 2,000 bomb threats to Jewish institutions, including the Israeli Embassy in Washington, DC, were made in the first three months of 2017. “My personal take is it’s a statement of where we are in this country,” Michael Feinstein, the chief executive of the Bender
Jewish Community Center of Greater Washington, in Rockville, Md., said.
In March 2017, an arrest was made: that of 19-year-old IsraeliAmerican Michael Ron David Kadar. He had been rejected from the Israel Defense Forces over mental-health issues and claimed in his defense that he had a brain tumor.
A few of the threats didn’t come from the Jewish teenager. At least eight were the work of Juan Thompson, 32, who was trying to frame a woman who had broken up with him. Thompson, a black journalist, had previously been fired from The Intercept for making up sources and stories. In response to his firing, he blamed the “white New York media” and claimed his editors were racist.
Forty-two Jewish tombstones were toppled in Washington Cemetery in Midwood, Brooklyn, in March 2017. While officials were worried it was an anti-Semitic act, the NYPD named another suspect: the wind.
“[It was] due to neglect, or weather factors like soil and dirt and wind. There is no evidence to suggest this was a case of vandalism,” a police spokesman said.
Five black cadet candidates were bombarded with verbal hate on message boards at the Air Force Academy Preparatory School in Colorado Springs in September 2017. It turns out the comments were written by one of the men who had claimed to be targeted.
CNN commentator Frida Ghitis didn’t think that point mattered much, saying in a follow-up report, “The election of President Donald Trump lifted the rock under which much of the hatred had hidden, allowing it to squirm out into the light.”
African-American Adwoa Lewis, 20, of Long Island, said four teens yelled, “Trump 2016!” and slashed her tires in September 2018, leaving a note that read, “Go Home.” She later admitted to making the story up and putting the note on her car.
Union Temple in Brooklyn was defaced by messages such as “Die Jew Rats” and “Jew Better Be Ready” in November 2018. The alleged culprit? Gay African-American James Polite, who had previously interned for City Council Speaker Christine Quinn and was raised by Jewish foster parents. He was charged with hate crimes for the graffiti and setting fires at four other Jewish temples and schools. But friends and advocates say bigotry wasn’t to blame. Polite is bipolar and was convinced that the FBI and CIA had taken over the city’s homeless-shelter system.
More than 100 students marched to demand “safe spaces” after “KKK,” swastikas and the names of four black and Latino students were scrawled in a bathroom stall at Goucher College near Baltimore in November 2018. But it turned out one of those names, Fynn Arthur, 21, was the person responsible. The biracial lacrosse player explained to cops that “he had been drinking and just did something dumb.”
On Dec. 30, 2018, a 7-year-old black girl, Jazmine Barnes, was killed in a drive-by shooting in Houston. Witnesses said a white man in a pickup truck was nearby. Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-Texas) insisted, “Do not be afraid to call this what it seems to be — a hate crime.” But the investigation led to the arrest of two African-Americans, Eric Black Jr. and Larry D. Woodruffe, who police believe fired into the car in which the child was riding in a case of mistaken identity.
This past New Year’s Eve, three Savannah, Ga., churches and a civil-rights museum were vandalized, raising the specter of a hate crime. But it was an AfricanAmerican, David Smith III, who had allegedly thrown bricks through the doors.
Video went viral of a Jan. 18 confrontation at the March for Life in Washington, DC, showing students from Covington Catholic HS in Kentucky, some in MAGA hats, in a confrontation with Native-American Nathan Phillips.
“They were in the process of attacking these four black individuals,” Phillips told the Detroit Free Press. “I was witnessing all of this . . . It just got to a point where you do something or you walk away, you know?”
But other videos showed a group of Black Israelites taunting the Covington teens with racial insults, such as, “Christ is coming back to kick your cracker asses.” And Phillips wasn’t surrounded by the Covington students; he walked into the group and started banging a drum in the face of one of the kids.
A lawyer for a Covington student has filed a defamation suit against The Washington Post for $250 million in damages.